Beatles

On January 21st 2014 Apple Corp/Capitol will release a thirteen CD box set containing all of the American Beatle albums from Meet The Beatles (1964) to Hey Jude (1970). Just think: the entire history of the Beatles is like the time between 2007 and now. Think about that. It's guaranteed to blow your mind.

The discs contain both the mono and stereo versions, except for Beatles' Story and Hey Jude, which are in stereo only. And yes, the set will include the famous "Butcherblock cover" for Yesterday and Today

The box includes a sixty four page booklet containing promo items and photos. The artwork will be faithful to the originals, including the inner sleeves.

As we all know, the tracks differ between U.K. and U.S. records with the American records containing fewer tracks but singles and the U.K. editions containing more tracks but no singles.

These are the CD debuts of the A Hard Day's Night original soundtrack, The Beatles' Story documentary, Yesterday and Today, Hey Jude and the American version of Revolver. All except for the documentary will be available individually for a limited time. Now here's the thing that makes this set pretty crazy: my U.K. contacts tell me that after listening to the Capitol tapes, the producers decided they didn't like the sound, so rather than using the American "Dave Dexterized" versions we all grew up with here in the U.S., which included different EQ and plenty of reverb designed to excite the "kiddies", the tracks will be compiled, where possible, using the UK remasters from a few years ago— though it wasn't made clear how the set would handle tracks like "I Feel Fine" and "She's a Woman" that were presented in "electronically reprocessed for stereo" versions in America and in real stereo in the U.K.

The same was true of most of A Hard Day's Night, which was originally issued by United Artists. That recorded sounded like it was lifted from the film's optical track and then reprocessed. Magical Mystery Tour is not included in the set.

Third party (but authoritative) sources also tell me that the electronically reprocessed songs will be replaced with genuine stereo mixes and that stereo-to-mono fold-downs on the Beatles 2nd album will be replaced by genuine mono mixes. Another tells me that the booklet will include a detailed account of what sources were used for what, which is a good thing! We hope to have complete clarification of all of this directly from Apple Corps head Jeff Jones.

If it's true that the tracks will be the same as on the recent U.K. box set, we know two things: one, that this is an odd enterprise and two, the Ted Jensen mastered CD "long boxes" containing Capitol version remasters, now out of print, will become a serious collector's item because these not those will become the "official" American CD reissues even though those are the real deal.

Much of this is speculation until we get clarification, so stay tuned.

One thing is for sure: Apple Corps is planning more to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' arrival in America but if repackaging the same tunes in a different track order is the first part of the celebration what can be next? 8-Tracks?